Saturday, October 15, 2011

New Background Pic On Redsox.com

Here's the new pic. Taken some time very recently. On the pitchers' ball/strike board on the right, I'd guess that says Matsuzaka. His total is 10, his strikes are 6, and his percentage is 60. (Could be 8 and 80.) So it's the first inning of a Dice game, which appears to have a setting sun, making it a 7:10 game. The board looks like it's the HD one with the current font, which would make it a 2011 game. (Logos on tarp also match 2011, it was clearly different in 2010.) Figuring it couldn't be too early in the season, since it would be almost dark in the first inning, I started with Dice's latest game and looked at the pitch-by-pitch. May 16th vs. Baltimore. 7:10. Sure enough, 6 of his first 10 pitches were strikes. And the 10th pitch was a double by Derek Lee, which means there would be a pause in the action there, making a picture more likely. However! April 29th vs. Seattle also fits the criteria. I thought I was stumped right there--how do we decide between those two? Sunset was 8:00 for the May game and 7:41 for the April one. Could be either. But the weather clinches it. In the April game, it was 70 degrees. In the May game: 48. Lots of windows open at the press box level, and that just seems like more of a 70-degree crowd than a 48-degree one. Lots of people in the chairs downstairs already. And the 48-degree night was also a rain-soaked one. I don't see any sign of that here. (Also, a Friday night with Ichiro in the house means more total pictures taken than a Monday Orioles game.)

But I am still worried that could be a white jersey in the dugout--and we wore the red ones that night. But maybe it's the white pants of someone sitting on the front bench up against the protective screen. I'll just tell myself that.

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And here's something I never noticed until now, for some reason. If you look at the championship flags there behind home plate, you'll see that they "left room" for the next banner. There's way more space to the right of 2007 than there is to the left of 1903. However, if you look at pictures taken after the 2004 banner was up but before the 2007 one was, you'll notice it they all WERE evenly positioned left-right. So when they added 2007, instead of having to move every banner slightly and adding one, they just moved all of them one space to the left, only having to crate new "holes" for 1903 at the far left. So it was done mainly for convenience--much easier to move them all over one spot, but if you choose to move them left, you get that whole "space left for the next one" effect. Now the question is, when the next one comes, will they all be even again, or will they make a whole new series of holes JUST to keep the "room for milk" theory alive? We'll find out in 2012. I said we'll find out in 2012.